To the editor:

On November 3 Rhode Islanders will get another chance to end the neglect and embarrassment of being the only American state without a state historical museum by approving Question 4, oddly titled “Cultural Economy.” That referendum will authorize the state to issue $45 million in bonds to create a state history center close to the State Capitol as a museum to display Rhode Island’s amazing history, house its most treasured historical documents, and educate its citizens and visitors to our state.

Back in the year 2000, the private, volunteer effort to create a state historical museum to be named Heritage Harbor was foiled when voters narrowly rejected a $25 million bond for its construction on the Providence waterfront in the vacant Narragansett Electric Company powerhouse. That defeat prompted the private nonprofit developer to seek a partnership with an experienced for-profit corporation. It chose Struever Brothers, Eccles, and Rouse (SBER), a major developer of Baltimore’s famed Inner Harbor that had come to Rhode Island to engage in such successful factory rehabilitation projects as Royal Mills in West Warwick and Rising Sun Mills on Valley Street in Providence.
In the midst of its rehab effort the Carcieri administration foolishly secured the reduction of state historic tax credits making the project financially untenable, so SBER withdrew and the project failed.

After the Great Recession subsided, the Museum Board sold its interest and its project to another developer in 2015. The one benefit from this long museum effort was the creation of the nonprofit, grant-giving Heritage Harbor Foundation from the sale proceeds of $3.6 million dollars that I immediately invested with the Rhode Island Foundation.
Over the last decade this foundation, in concert with the Rhode Island Publications Society, has published dozens of books and booklets about Rhode Island’s history. It also supports our Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, has given heritage grants to over 60 local nonprofit historical organizations, and has built its own heritage projects, most notably Woonsocket’s World War II Memorial Park.

On November 3 Rhode Island has a final opportunity for a state museum. Do not let history repeat itself. We have a Secretary of State in Gregg Amore who is more well-versed in Rhode Island History than any secretary of state since John Russell Bartlett (1855-1872). He has made a valiant effort to bring this major cultural project to the voters for approval, and he has the drive and the knowledge to implement it. I can testify to that as his former professor!

Let us end the disgraceful irony whereby the state that contributed religious liberty, separation of church and state, democracy via the two-party system, federalism, the movement towards independence, the birth of the U.S. Navy, judicial review, popular referenda on constitutional change, circumnavigation of the globe and the American claim to the Great Northwest by its merchants, and the origin of America’s Industrial Revolution hides its major contributions to this nation under a cloak of apathy or indifference.

In view of these landmark achievements, the popular, long-running TV documentary “Mysteries at the Museum” must regard Rhode Island’s absence of a state-funded museum as a major mystery. To end the suspense, vote to approve Question 4.

Patrick T. Conley, Bristol
Historian Laureate; Emeritus & Founding President of the Heritage Harbor Foundation